“I haven’t done it yet,” Kara whispers, placing one trembling finger under Cat’s chin, tilting her face gently upwards. “But I’m about to. Speak now or...”

“Forever hold my peace?” Cat teases. She can taste Kara’s hesitation, and the cruel streak in Cat wants to see how long it can last. It’s like blowing bubbles, and she’s holding her breath to wait for the pop. “Kara,” she breathes, and that’s enough to do it.

The faint pressure of her lips is almost ticklish at first, and Cat smells the faintest hint of synthetic strawberries, which distracts for all of a second. It’s too tentative to count, so she hums just a little in encouragement. Kara responds beautifully, moving her lips against Cat’s with a gentle kind of skill that steals her breath away. It ends far too quickly, and Cat gasps at the lack of contact.

“Can I?” Kara asks.

“You don’t have to ask,” Cat tells her, although she bites back a correction over ‘can’ versus ‘may’ first. 

Kara kisses more deeply this time, and Cat allows herself the indulgence of pressing her fingers around the back of Kara’s neck. The first flicker of Kara’s tongue is enough to disperse any lingering doubts on Cat’s end. This has been inevitable, perhaps for too long. 

She tosses the tablet aside, not caring when it slides from the sofa with a dull crack that doesn’t bode well. Pulling Kara down into her lap with careless hands, Cat enjoys being pressed against the cushions by the gentle weight of her. She could almost swear Kara is floating for a moment, so little pressure does she exert when straddling Cat’s thighs. 

“We shouldn’t do this here,” Cat reminds her as Kara’s warm mouth, with its fading taste of pumpkin-covered-by-mint (and of course she probably popped a mint when Cat wasn’t looking, Kara the always prepared) makes trails down her neck. “Anyone could see.”

“Time to find out if you can keep a secret,” Kara announces, shifting position just slightly and exhaling over Cat’s shoulder. The sudden chill is explained when Cat looks over her shoulder to see the glass wall coated in ice.

“I knew it!” She yelps, although truthfully her faith in her instincts has been shaken after all the mess with Adam. “But yes, I can keep a secret.”

“Good,” Kara smiles down at her. “Because some of what I have planned? Is probably not safe for print.”

She grew up seeing the earth from afar, imagined the trees so green they would blind her, a sky so blue it would break her heart, and the entirety of space thrown over her head like a blanket of velvet sprinkled with silver light. She never once imagined how bloody and awful and terrible the place could be, that it would rip her child from her arms and cast her into the darkness, that it would break so many of the people she loves.

Abby can’t sleep, because when she does, she has nightmares.

Raven has nightmares, too. 

Not that she tells anyone this. But she has them. And Abby knows. She walks the halls at night and passes Raven’s quarters two, three, four times a night, hears her go from tinkering to sleeping to shouting. Her room is far enough removed from the other sleeping quarters that no one comes running, not Wick, not Lincoln, not Monty. 

Raven is alone.

Like Abby is alone.

But Abby never intrudes. She knows when she’s not wanted. (Though it hurts her to know.)

Raven pushes and pushes so hard that Abby feels herself stumbling backwards through curtains she thought she’d drawn on the past. If she falls too far back, she worries she’ll lose everything they’ve ever been. 

(She remembers Subsection 3, the way Raven’s hands had been warm and rough and so sure, the way they had lost everything but had each other, had hope, the cold air inside the tent, the look on Raven’s face when she insisted, “it doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to.”

But god, didn’t it mean everything?)

And now it might not even matter. They’re something else, broken and shattered and rebuilt out of scar tissue and pain and bones that ache in the dead of the night. Wick won’t even work with Raven any more, she’s pushed him so hard. And Abby isn’t sure she’s slept in her own quarters since Jackson okayed her to leave the hospital bay. 

They don’t talk.

Moonshine and piano music pale in comparison to the ways they used to fill their lonely nights on the Ark, to the way Raven looked at Abby over the radio when she deciphered the Mountain’s code. But Abby takes what she’s given. 

But now…now that she knows Clarke is alive, knows she’s so close to being home, she can’t ignore Raven’s shouts in the night. 

She slips into Raven’s quarters quietly, with no real plan, just a need to be near her.

“Who the fuck is there?”

Raven’s voice is tight with pain, rough from sleep, and Abby shores up the cracks in her foundation.

“Raven—”

“Get out, Abby.”

“No,” she says firmly, surprised by how much it sounds like she means it. This isn’t mother, Chancellor, doctor, this is just her, ragged and scared and hurting. 

“I don’t—” Abby hears her inhale sharply, and then nothing. Raven’s quarters are so goddamn dark and all Abby wants is to see Raven’s face. Abby makes her way across the room carefully, shuffling her feet ahead of her to catch anything before her still-sore leg can make contact. She finds her way to Raven’s bed, a narrow thing set into an alcove in the wall.  

“Raven, please. I…” 

“What?” Raven says in a rush of air. Abby hears her shift in the bed, perhaps she’s rolling onto her back to look up, or onto her side to turn away. 

“I can’t sleep,” she sighs, shoulders drooping. It’s not a lie, she can’t sleep, won’t sleep, but that’s not why—

“I’m not really in the mood for sex,” Raven says flatly, and Abby feels like she’s been hit right in her heart.

“That’s not what I meant,” Abby says, letting her hurt bleed through her voice. “I just…can I lie with you? For a while?”

“Oh…”

“Nevermind. This was—”

“Yeah,” Raven says softly, and then there’s rustling and shifting and then Raven lets out a little groan. “Be careful.”

“Okay,” Abby says, feeling utterly exhausted as she feels around for the edge of Raven’s bed. She lowers herself onto it carefully, pats her hands back until she brushes Raven’s bare arm. Once she has her bearings she undoes her boots and kicks them away from the side of the bed before pulling her feet up onto the cot.

There’s a lot of shifting and adjusting, then. Raven’s bed is narrow, like all of the beds for single people, and she only has one good pillow. She offers it to Abby wordlessly, and Abby tries to keep her hands from trembling as she tucks it under her head. 

And then, just like that, they’re lying face-to-face, knees touching, bodies so close Abby can feel Raven’s body heat. Raven’s quilt is soft, warm, and Abby wonders if the winter quilt on her bed is nice like this.

She’s never tried it out.

“Why did you really come here?” Raven says quietly. 

“I…” Abby worries her lip, staring hard into the darkness like she can make out the shape of Raven’s face. “I’ve heard you shouting in your sleep for the past two weeks. I—”

“Do you even sleep?”

“Not at night,” Abby says flatly, clenching and unclenching her fist on top of the pillow. Abby feels Raven’s hand shift and then her sleep-warm fingers find Abby’s fist and gently uncurl the fingers with a kind of careful patience that makes Abby’s heart break. Raven gently rubs her thumb over Abby’s knuckles and along the side of her palm, and Abby’s eyelids droop of their own accord.

“You can’t escape the nightmares by sleeping during the day,” Raven says, finally, and Abby sighs. 

“I can try.”

“Abby…”

It’s all Raven says. Abby knows, from the tone of her voice, the way Raven is looking at her right now, knows what Raven wants to say, knows that it’s probably true. But Raven doesn’t say it. She just shifts closer, until they’re sharing the pillow and her nose brushes against Abby’s. 

“Raven… I miss—” Abby takes a shaky breath, all that patchwork foundation crumbling under Raven’s proximity, under the way she’s always said Abby’s name, like the air around it is softer than around other words.

“I miss her, too,” Raven says gently, her thumb still making passes over Abby’s skin. 

“No…I mean...” she purses her lips. “Raven, these past four months have been hell and it’s not just because of Clarke or waiting for my leg to heal or wondering if the Ice Nation will attack. It’s also because you hate me.” She shuts her eyes and shakes her head. “Maybe things would be marginally more bearable if you didn’t push me away so hard…”

“Shit,” Raven sighs and Abby opens her eyes as she feels the pillow shift and Raven’s hand slip away from hers. “You know how I was having a nightmare like, ten minutes ago, and it woke me up?”

“….Yes?”

“I’d like to get back to the sleeping part,” she says, emphasising her point with a yawn. “And I think you should get some sleep, too.”

“But—”

“Abby,” Raven says sharply, “please. It’s...too much, right now.” 

Abby snaps her mouth closed and she feels heat pricking the corners of her eyes—god she never used to hurt so easily. “You’re right,” Abby sighs after a moment—always right—and rubs her cheek against the coarse fabric of Raven’s pillow. Raven’s hand finds her hip in the darkness and stays there, warm against Abby’s skin, long after Raven’s breathing has deepened and evened out.

Abby has become a lot of things since the Ark landed; a ghost, an empty shell, an open, bleeding wound. But, when Abby wakes up next to Raven, her face soft with what must be a rarely painless sleep, she feels a shade closer to being whole.

I missed you.

But those are words, truths, for another day.

Instead, she brushes a strand of hair from Raven’s face and, for a moment, allows herself to feel completely and totally unburdened. But just for a moment. She knows that at any moment the outside world will come crashing back in.